A Question....

[libgirl.livejournal.com]

Has there been any consideration about age restrictions at the suggested archive?

As a long-time, multi-fandom participant and talking with another one this week over the issue at LJ and with fanlib, two things came up:

1. As long as we're paying someone else to host our things, they can decide not to host specific things. Also, people will attempt to make a profit off of us in any way possible. The best solution is to host our own site with a dedicated server than can house us all.

2. We were talking and we both agreed that if there was a multi-fandom fanfiction hub, we wouldn't want it to be along the lines of ff.net. Everyone I know cringes when a news source goes to ff.net to talk about the "fandom phenomenon". That said, admitting fic.'s based on quality is tricky and subjective. If we create something, for ourselves, then I hope that we would both cover ourselves legally and present ourselves professionally. There is a legal issue involving minors and NC-17 material than can only really be remedied by not allowing minors. The easiest solution seems to be creating a panfandom archive for underage readers either in association with or as part of the larger archive, requiring a age statement to sign up and logged-in-only access to adult material. Also, if there are no underage readers allowed, then there is less likelihood of creating another ff.net.

I know that this will probably not be a popular opinion. I know that many people in fandom, particularly on LJ are underage and "passing" or "socking" in order to read adult material. I'm not saying that some underage readers cannot handle adult material or aren't already participating in adult activities; however, from a legal standpoint, it seems more responsible to take precautions.

Additionally, in light of the recent LJ events, it's obvious that much of what gets archives, websites, journals and fic.'s shut down is a perceived danger to the "childrenz". If this is a site by adults, for adults it's less likely to come under that sort of negative fire. After all, we're going to have to deal with the legal ramifications of intellectual property and copyright laws already.

I'm truly not trying to rock the boat or ignore the many and important contributions of underage fans to fandom. I'm just trying to ascertain how the issues of liability will be dealt with.

Comments

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Oh okay. I could have swore that some part was sectioned off for higher rated fic. Maybe someplace else? Like I said it was a long time ago.

It was just very frustrating to be a fen who was so much younger for so long. Where I started had a p13 cap and as long as you were 13, you were fine. To here how everyone thins under 18 shouldn't do this or that, is a bit frustrating because it was a major part of my middle/high school years.

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was of mine too. I was just in a fandom where smut wasn't really an issue.

And I don't think it really is about whether under-18's should do this or that, it's that there are legal issues involved. Archives have received Cease and Desist letters for not locking up their NC-17 stuff in some way, so it's just something that has to be thought about.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Oh well, for me smut definitely was an issue, seeing as I was in HP. I mean after awhile their was pornish_pixies. Which I can never remember reading fic in. You know why? Because I has parents. Parents who weren't afraid to take away internet access at the drop of the dime. Hell I read some tame(PG13 or R) crossgen fic where Harry was like 30, and got an earful of how and why I should never read it again, and that pedophilia is wrong. Trust me, that will be enough to scare anyone away from reading it(No seriously, I never got the "sex talk"; I got "Pedophilia is wrong--even in fiction"). Or at least at the time their was no TOR or I wasn't smart enought to subvert it in other crafty ways. However I always found it curios that I could have sex and get married(in my state) and they would turn a blind eye to drinking and smoking, however I was forbidden from reading fic about sex. Funny, right?

Anyway it is an obvious legal issue or fanfiction.net would have Nc17 fics still.

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

I hid my online life from my parents for years, not because my parents had any idea that there was even such a thing as fanfiction, but because they were convinced that everyone on the net is a pedophile. Anyone I was talking to was probably a predator out to murder me horribly. Which, you know, is a problem on the net, certainly it is, but really - there's caution and then there's paranoia that makes your kid hide things from you. I'm hoping I'll know the difference when the time comes.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Well I would have hid it, I think that is a natural reaction -- towards being more independent as a young adult, but my stepfather does networking stuff for a living and likes to stay up to date on new technology. It was one of the things that made me annoyed, that everyone else's parents had no clue about computers, and mine were so far ahead of me I had no chance to catch up.

From what I have noticed? Either parents are overly paranoid or they are not at all cautious -- both of which don't really do any good. I would like to think that now as more and more people grow up with the internet, their will be a greater understanding, I guess, of how to protect their children.

[celtic-tigress.livejournal.com]

There are no archive sites associated w/ FA that host adult HP fic, but there are several non-affiliated ones that do host NC-17 fic. restrictedsection.org (all ships), checkmated.com (Ron/Hermione only) are a couple I can think of off the top of my head, and Sycophant Hex (can't remember the url, but it's the first thing that pops up on a google search) has branches that host different genres/ships of fic. I wouldn't recommend any of those as paradigms, since they all require registration to see teh pr0nz, but as a guide on how not to do things, or to see their categorization schemes, let me know and I'll let you borrow my passwords.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Restricted section was what I was thinking of. Beyond the registration aspect, is their anything else that makes them less than perfect?

[celtic-tigress.livejournal.com]

Well, they put up a warning page before every fic, as well as before every chapter and clicking through those can get tedious, especially when the chapters are short. Also, after you sign in the cookie that allows access to the fics runs out within a couple of hours, and you have to re-sign in frequently. That is frustrating as well. There is no way to view other comments made on a story the way FA and LJ have either (I think).

On the plus side, their search function works well, and you can search by pairing (even when pairing includes more than two characters), and they offer a bookmarking and alert system for registered members that lets you know when an author you've added to a favorite list has updated.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Ah yes that would get very tedious.

Searchability is something that can get very frustrating, very fast if it isn't good. It is an issue that I think is even a bigger deal than age restriction, or whatever were calling this.

[celtic-tigress.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally get you with the search thing. Wraithbait, for example, has the worst search function I've ever experienced. I believe I have suffered a stroke just from using that site alone.

[bluevsgrey.livejournal.com]

Yeah for some reason I never really liked Wraithbait, it didn't seem very usable. It has a pretty background/skin though.